The European Commission has reportedly launched an investigation into the outbreak of flaming iPhones and iPods which has apparently raged across Europe this summer.
According to the EU Observer the Commission's Industry and Enterprise tentacle has requested information from both the company and member countries.
The commission …

too obvious?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

maybe apple are all terrorists and at the precise time all bankers, accountants, prepy boys, world leaders, fanbois and buddahs get one they will explode simultaneously and the joint explosions will leave a small crater in the northern hemisphere.

number of cases

Much hullabaloo about nothing

I think this will end up being the most hyper-inflated story of all time. The flaming iPods "raged across Europe"? This huge raging firestorm consisting of 4 or 5 incidents? If this is raging across Europe then the Black Death probably only consisted of a single family getting a cold one winter.

I may end up being wrong, but this seems like another FUD inspired story. Even if these few incidents are true it comes out to be like one hundred thousandth of one percent. Statistically it's a non-issue based on those numbers, and is more likely a user caused issue. If it was a hardware related issue I'd expect to find a much higher percentage of incidents.

The issue isn't the number of incidents

Re: The issue isn't the number of incidents

Well some bloke who claims an iPhone was propelled 10 ft up in the air claims that Apple offered him a replacement in return for keeping quiet. Sounds like a load of bull on both counts to me! Why on earth would Apple even consider that a replacement iPhone would be offset by signing a non-disclosure agreement? The whole thing makes no sense at all! Wouldn't suprise me if the bloke had dreamt the whole thing up. At worst it was probably a malfunctioning battery that caused some damage to the iPhone and when taken into a store some spotty dimwit said he could have a replacement and jokingly said "please don't go advertising it".

Also I'm pretty sure at least one or two of the other so called incidents had involved users mucking around with the innards of the device, which is generally not a good idea if you start damaging a lithium-based battery.

Hush Money

"Even if these few incidents are true it comes out to be like one hundred thousandth of one percent"

You have to wonder how many of these people took Apple's hush money and how many got refunds at their Apple Store/generic apple reseller though. Plus what's going to get reported are the more severe incidents.

"I blame Opera for it. They must have grassed them up too because their browser sucks"

Funny, but that's not the accusation.

The accusation is that Opera are a European business, and Microsoft are American so it's 'easy' for the EU to go after them. Also given the EU's track record with Boeing, Intel and a few others it's kind of plausable. The problem isn't that they're dealing with companies exploiting monopolies, that's all well and good - the question is proportionality, looking after your own, and the relentlessness of attacks on microsoft over IE - even though everybody knows (yes even tech-tards) that IE is a worthless piece of s**t.

It's a blatant response to the argument that if the tables were turned and Airbus were doing what Boeing were doing, would they be so relentless.. Or would the EU hush it up?

I suspect they'd hush it up.

Anyways, I've gone slightly off topic but that comment needed a response. The comptetition comission arm of the EU does a good job but they need to be seen to be *just*. And I'm typing this from a laptop running Linux before you ask.

@Martin Nicholls

Opera are not an EU business. They operate outside of the EU just as much as MS. Infact, given how many EU-based offices MS have and how many Euros they take, they're much more of a European company than Opera.